SOURCE: Zimbardo, Rose A. “Of Women, Comic Imitation of Nature, and Etherege's The Man of Mode.” SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1800 21, no. 3 (summer 1981): 373-87.

In the essay below, Zimbardo analyzes the comic function of the female characters in The Man of Mode, noting that Etherege was one of the last playwrights of the Restoration period to utilize women to achieve proper comic perspective.

Let [women] look with their clearest vision abroad and at home. They will see that where they have no social freedom, comedy is absent, where they are household drudges, the form of comedy is primitive; where they are tolerably independent, but uncultivated, exciting melodrama takes its place, and a sentimental vision of them. … But where women are on the road to an equal footing with men, in attainment and in liberty—in what they have won for themselves, and what has been granted them...